Texas lawmaker Wendy Davis goes glam in Vogue pose

DALLAS (Reuters) - Wendy Davis, the Texas state senator who wore pink tennis shoes during a filibuster against tough new abortion restrictions, shows off her more glamorous side in the September issue of Vogue magazine.

The magazine’s fall fashion extravaganza features a four-page profile of Democrat Davis, including a photo of her dressed in a designer dress and high heels near the rotunda of the Texas State Capitol.

Davis, 50, who is considering running for Texas governor, gained national attention in June when she spoke for nearly 11 hours to temporarily stall passage of the abortion measure. Fans and supporters contributed about $1 million to her campaign in the days following the effort, which ultimately failed to stop the proposal becoming law.

“We felt that Wendy Davis had entered the political conversation in a really interesting way with her filibuster,” Hildy Kuryk, director of communication for Vogue, said on Thursday.

“By standing up for women’s beleaguered reproductive rights in Texas, she captured the attention of women across the country who were eager to know more about her and understand her potential for greater leadership,” Kuryk said.

The Vogue article focuses on Davis’s rise from poverty to a prosperous career in law and politics. At age 19, Davis was a divorced single mother living in a trailer park. While working to support herself and young daughter, she enrolled in community college, went on to earn a bachelor’s degree at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth and then earned a law degree at Harvard University.

“Looking back, I don’t know if I could do it again,” she told the magazine. “But somehow you just have the energy to do what you have to do.”

The magazine is being mailed to subscribers this week and will be on newsstands nationwide by August 20.

No Democrat has been elected to a statewide office since 1994, and leading Republican gubernatorial front-runner Greg Abbott has a campaign war chest of nearly $21 million, according to latest fundraising data.

Davis has said she will make a decision on whether to run for governor by Labor Day on September 2.